One month older and nearer to my Lord. FUZZ had a benign tumor removed from his leg mid-month, and I spent several days sitting on the couch watching movies and yelling at him as he licked the bandage. (We own a Cone of Shame; I am not smart enough to get it on him. Pfft.) He’s doing better now that the stitches are out.
Nebenan (2021)
Netflix, original mostly-Deutsch
Spanish actor Daniel Brühl wrote this script about himself, then directed himself starring in it. *eyebrow* He wakes up in his luxury Berlin penthouse condo with private elevator, says good-bye to his wife, kids, and nanny (all speaking Spanish), and pops into a neighborhood Kneipe (pub) for a cup of coffee on his way to London to audition for a an American super-hero franchise.
At this point, I am bored and annoyed, because the banner teased an East German spy story, and I am getting an extended celebrity selfie…
Sitting in the Kneipe is a neighbor (Peter Kurth), an older man who lived under Soviet rule and currently lives in a small walk-up across the courtyard from Brühl and his family. He strikes up a conversation about the films Brühl has done about East Germany–films with Western actors are all “romantic trash” and don’t reflect the reality at all. As Brühl excuses himself to catch a taxi, Kurth drops an observation about the nanny. He can hear everything that goes on in the Brühl Family home, because their windows are always open and the voices echo through the courtyard.
And then the movie turns into an actionless thriller, which I know sounds weird, but Kurth’s character keeps dropping more, darker, tenser observations about Brühl and his family–maybe he was a spy after all?–and offers to share some secrets with the wife.
An interesting treatment of tensions that persist between Ossis and Wessis, and between rich celebrities and normal working-class Berliners. (For example, there are “wear your mask” posters all over, as it was filmed during a time of mandatory indoor masking, but none of the characters wear a mask because actors were exempt… [Obscenities here.])
Blade Runner (1982)
Warner Film, original English
First time I’ve seen this one; I missed it when all my peers saw it (yeah yeah) and despite catching a thousand references to it over the last thirty years, I never got around to seeing it. Contrast to Mr Radish, who was very impressed by it in its day and got excited when it popped up in the cable listing.
1) Harrison Ford gets along better with eight working fingers than I do.
2) Sean Young’s bangs and eyebrows are absolute dystopian nightmare fuel. Kudos to the stylist.
3) I finally understand the Grover meme.
Ridley Scott’s California of 2019 had a lot more neon than I expected, and I had a wry chuckle at Arthur Dales smoking a cigarette indoors, but the streets were full of trash and mentally ill people–good prognostication there.
Brainstorm (1983)
Warner Film, original English
Natalie Wood’s last film; I had never heard of it, but the premise was interesting: A group of scientists have learned how to record people’s brain activity and play it back inside other people’s brains, so they can have the same experience. (Of course one of the first things they record is a sex act, and the replay fried the synapses of a team member trying it out at home. Heh.) An executive at the facility (Uncle Ben, before he understood great power comes with great responsibility) sells it out to “the military”, so they can use the invention to torture and kill people. The team decides to stop them, with an incredibly-timed and extremely enjoyable hacker-attack on the mainframe controlling the robots at the factory.
This was a good pick. Seek it out.
For the nerds: the brain-playbacks were shot with a different filmstock and aspect ratio than the action.
The Big Sleep (1946)
Warner Film, original English
I know everyone loves this one, but there’s no resolution to the investigation, because neither the director nor the author of the novel it was adapted from knew whodunnit, and I found this extremely irritating.
Anyway. Check Marlowe off the list of detectives lampooned in Murder By Death.
Happy Gilmore (1996)
Warner Comedy, original English
When the audience rating on the IMDB is more than twice the professional-critic rating, you know it’s good. I haven’t laughed so hard in ages. Ben Stiller (uncredited) running a quilt sweatshop in an old folk’ home…heh.
Doc Hollywood (1991)
Kabel Eins, Deutsch
Nostalgia pick. In 1991, I purchased a cassingle of Chesney Hawke’s “The One and Only“, so I could blast it in my dad’s station wagon while chauffeuring my siblings.
How did Michael J. Fox ever become a romantic lead? But I think it holds up, because the townspeople are all giants of character acting, and also as a time capsule. Hey, kids, there was a time when women in movies weren’t all distorted by surgeries and toxins…
Start the Revolution Without Me (1970)
Warner Film, original English
Everything I like in a movie–palaces, costumes, comedians–but I didn’t laugh as much as I expected. Laurel and Hardy did the identical twin gag better than Wilder and Sutherland, the love interest was unsympathisch, and the end was confusing. Redeeming features: Orson Welles pokes a bit of fun at himself at the beginning, and the costumes were great. Really great.
Dark City (1998)
Warner Film, original English
More dystopian eyebrows, this time on Jennifer Connelly.
What I remember about the first time I saw this film twenty-odd years ago: I didn’t understand it and I fell asleep. This time I understood it–non-human intelligences are treating people like lab rats; one rat has mutated–but the parapsychic fight between the evolved human and the Stranger at the end took so long I nearly fell asleep. It felt like they were showing off the new CGI equipment–we can do this! And this! And this! Nice bit of technical work, but drama so intense cannot be sustained without exhausting this viewer.
The Strangers looked so much like Graf Orlock, I conclude that must be intentional. Like that thing last year with The Exorcist (this movie was also mentioned in that podcast…I am slowly working through a list). I am on to you, Hollywood.
Jailhouse Rock (1957)
Warner Film, original English
It took two full calendar years after my DVR failed, in which this channel broadcast the unwatchable Kissin’ Cousins a dozen times, for Jailhouse Rock to be shown again. Enjoyable–definitely a time capsule–and markedly less corny than all of the Elvis movies I’ve seen since the RadishFlix project began. The titular musical number suffers from “forty years of cites, references, parodies, and praise” but I enjoyed the other songs.
(This is the second movie I’ve seen this month where characters have gone on a bus tour of stars’ homes and seen Jack Benny’s house. What does this mean?)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Warner Film, original English
Big cult classic, and I wonder….how do people like this shit? Terrible wooden acting, corny high-school-dropouts-on-Twitter dialog, and a graphic rape scene so disgusting I honestly don’t understand how it got released in theaters with an R rating. (Dark City got a German “not suitable for under 16 or sensitive viewers warning. This one didn’t. F’n German television, man.)
Silver lining: Now I’ve seen a David Lynch picture and I know not to ever do that again.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Warner Film, original English
Most of the vintage thrillers I have seen since beginning the RadishFlix project have become un-thrilling with time. (I couldn’t even write about Arabesque last year; it was zu Cringe, as the kids say.) But this one held up–might even be more compelling now that we’ve learned how often child celebrities are abused by their co-workers, directors, and parents.
I had never seen any of this one; I was surprised by the twist at the end, and have continued to think about it for days.
Did you know the Academy still had a black-and-white category in 1963? I didn’t. I also would have nominated Maidie Norman for a Best Supporting over Victor Buono…
Stellungswechsel (2007)
Netflix, original Deutsch
Another typical German tax-funded-TV (ZDF and arte) “comedy” about five men with women and money problems who become male escorts as a way to fix them. You could do a lot with this idea. This team couldn’t.
Highlight: Sebastian Bezzel plays a hapless womanizing Munich cop years before he becomes Eberhofer, until he falls for Lisa Maria Pothoff, playing a softer and less superficial woman than Suzi, and that was kind of fun. But none of it was funny.
The Pool Of Actors Is Small Game: Lola’s dad and Magda Goebbels.
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
arte Mediathek, original English (with German subtitles, so I could understand the French-speaking Haitian friend)
Warning: Murdered pets and the N word.
Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, who wrote and directed that hipster vampire movie I hated…but I kept going past that opening credit, and really enjoyed this one. It’s a strange brew of urban cultures–two dying, one rising–and violence, and meditations, and technology, and nature. Interstitial text cards (from Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai), foreshadowing through vintage cartoons, mentoring a young girl who likes books, ice cream. Forrest Whittaker *is* Ghost Dog, and you love him.
But it’s a samurai movie, so you know what happens to him. Despite that, I am glad I watched it.
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